the mighty fall
by Nerumi H
Summary: we wear our traumas the way the guillotine wears gravity. our lovers' necks are so soft. - Iceburns in 100 themes. - 91: Elsa Arendelle, will you marry me?
1. I

**.a/n.:** Summary from Prism by Andrea Gibson (some heart-stopping slam poetry right there), and title from the Fall Out Boy song (how the mighty fall in love [guitar solo] ). But I promise everything past here is completely my own, hahah.)

This is essentially an entire series of me playing with the capabilities of the interactions between these two. Some aren't even going to be romantic at all, some more than I expect out of myself. Moral ambiguity, emotional manipulation, varying levels of understanding, tension, and acceptance between the two... Yeah. From 30 words to 2k. Are you ready I am so ready.

Warnings will precede any entries with potentially triggering themes!

Thanks for reading and enjoy and don't make me nervously mumble about requesting comments like a huge dweeb, okay?

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**91: I**

Anna had warned her - oh, how her sister had warned her.

Elsa had known something was up, from the very top of this evening: she knew because when she told him her observations in one short question of "What are you up to?" he did not answer with: "You're being paranoid."

That was the typical result, and admittedly she could be a little nervous on a good day, but he knew that, that was why he constructed their outings so precisely - he practically gave her a schedule at times, because he _knew_ how much she felt like she was on the very edge of falling into a very deep pool, or it is concrete, or thin, dead air, whenever she was being pulled around to places and people she did not know, a feeling her sister had yet to completely grasp despite honorable attempts... But, well, it will sound crazy -

In a sky blue and crystal white dress at his arm in a twilit, stone square outside the ballet, Elsa feels as if it is _too_ constructed.

Paranoid, maybe, but she knows him better than anyone.

There's music billowing from the theatre to everyone returning home, yet no one has moved to dance; they all watch instead. Elsa glances over them all in return – it's strange, they're hovering a little too close –

And then there is his idle song in her ear that is not the same as the orchestra's but somehow fit or he makes it fit and they are the only ones dancing, people around the stage like a ring of fairy mushrooms. Here in the center she is losing her gaze of outside of it, blurring in the vague seconds she forgets she _does love him_, and in which she doesn't reassure herself with the mantra, _'he's not going to, he's not going to, he's not going to - '_

And then suddenly in the middle of the square he starts to speak in a voice all the critical audience can hear. He says - he says that they are to look at her, Elsa, and they are to observe how beautiful she is. A million pinpricks bite into her skin - she is a girl he fell to in throes of sorrow and sympathy and adoration for the way she could be crushed to fine powder but hold her head up high from the ashes. How she made him laugh, and feel lucky that he lived.

He's turned to her and speaking no quieter, but in a tone that illustrates privacy, touching her hands and her nervous smile.

He says he loves her.

You are every cardinal point to me when I am lost as I know the only way I need to go is to you. You are the salve to brutal pasts and I wish to be your own, where shattering does not mean breaking, and falling no longer means regret. Will you grant me just this wish that I ask, after you've blessed me with so much more:

Elsa Arendelle, will you marry me?

That speech echoes in her head because how could something so perfect be eclipsed to all these people by something like _this_?

He certainly can move time; for now, he freezes it.

Grinds the enormous clock tower to a halt, gears choking, massive hands rocking like the recoil from a gun in slow-motion. The stars stare hard upon her like children trying to make the other blink first.

The crowd stands full and alert around her from all sides, pushing in; they are hands extended, eyes peeling apart her skin, asking what will she say,_ what will she say, _claws unsheathed, how rude it would be to shoot him down...how embarrassed this boy would be, and after all you mean to him! She feels like hot metal over freezing water and if they take another step closer - say yes, Elsa - she will be crushed into a shape not her own and she will writhe.

The ring is a wink in the twilight, a glisten of moon rippling on a blanket of black, one she balances on the very edge of, her toes curling, her hands picking at her own gloves, waves crashing around her ears. A woman whispers it is beautiful. How close are they, enough to see it?

She tries to say his name.

(It's not just them that makes her want to say yes)

She is a puppet frozen within his influence, yet _he_ can move. He can morph his smile to one less of excitement, but of calm reassurance. Reach for one of her shaking hands and run his thumb along the outside of her smallest finger and into her wrist, the ginger way she can only tolerate her hands being touched.

And he can say, "I love you," and make it sound like, "Forever, for longer than you can imagine, more than you deserve."

The clock chimes.

Elsa is still shaking but the crowd will be in movement again.

Elsa softly pulls his hand to bring him up - he obeys. She takes a deep breath, knows he will not destroy her in the way the stares of the crowd are, tearing at her skin like bats, and leans close while determined not to touch. Breathes steadily, hands closed between her stomach and the velvet box, one that sears with too much light, fed by the enthusiasms of those she does not know and who do not understand.

They misinterpret. A woman cheers.

Elsa clutches at her ribs until they feel like they are shrinking her in the way she had been fearing, but with far less pain, and she tries her best to press her cheek against his.

She whispers amongst the thunder of applause, "No."

She shudders hard, and for a second he seems to absorb it and is wracked from the inside. But it lasts no longer than a blink.

The ring box snaps shut.

"That's - fine. Fine."

"I'm sorry."

"I should have known," Hans answers, and his hand hovers on her lower back, stiff.

"No," she repeats, the word ripped from her, fear that it hadn't been heard; the crowd, they don't know it, she should scream it and make them scatter like birds - "My answer is no."

"I heard you."

"Hans, you idiot." She fumbles with the words. "Of course my answer here and now is no - "

"Elsa. Let's go back. I just wanted you to know I love you."

There is spite. Frustration, but not unkind. He is easing her to the lot, squeezing her hand at her side while just under her ribs, it feels cold without her palm crushing out the erratic pulse.

"I know," she says, feeling irritated also. "I understood."

They make it to the car, and when her heels hit pavement she is hit by a rush so heavy it is akin to nausea. It is regret - she's embarrassed. He didn't ask for that. He didn't ask to stop time and send her reeling in a world she was afraid to tumble out of at any second. But the crowd… That was an intention. She sinks in the seat and Hans brushes his fingers across her temple as the chauffeur makes the car rumble beneath her toes.

She wants to see the ring again, suddenly.

It was terrifying, she cannot deny. But it was a light over that abyss all the same. Maybe, if she brought it closer to her, it would cast the sea full of glow and she could see what lied beneath.

"You're so stupid," she whispers frigidly.

"I meant what I said," Hans says. "Are you going to pay me back for what I did?"

"No." Maybe. "Why did you do that?" she asks, but regrets it - she'd do better to ignore it all entirely.

"I already told you."

She doesn't answer. She feels stretched thin, and he's still touching her, a whisper on skin; he's removed his gloves just for this. But her mind drifts to if her answer had been different...it wasn't all fear she'd felt, not entirely...

"I am the cardinal points," Elsa echoes thoughtfully. She leans away best she can in the car without appearing rude.

"You're everything."

She closes her eyes, fingers pushing reassuringly into her ribs. "Hans. Where do you think I guide you?"

She doesn't hear an answer: he thinks. What will assuage her.

Elsa leans her head against the window. "Ask me now."

"Pardon?"

"Will you ask me to marry you now, with no one to impress but me?"

Hans shifts in his seat, and she can hear a thumb sliding over the velvet box. He will think too much about what he is to say. "Why is that?"

"We are alone."

And with an earnest air that was abandoned in the previous attempt, exchanged for bravado, he says: "Will you marry me?"

She slowly uncurls. Her dress had been rumpled under her clutching hands - she slowly straightens it. Out the window, the people fade into the night, silhouettes in camera negatives. The question makes her stomach flip, but in a more sugary, butterfly way, though it is still misshapen by anvils and blood pounds in her shoulders as if in preparation to fly.

Cardinal directions. Birds can sense like a compass.

She opens her mouth to answer.

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.a/n.: prompted by petalouda85 on tumblr.


	2. Pretend

**.95.: Pretend**

"This seems familiar."

He can't help but smile at the breezy, careless amusement in her soft responding laugh; the way she's looking up at him through naked, fanned lashes, and guiding through their steps across the ballroom where there was once a coronation. It's night - the rest of the castle is asleep, and they're toying with their typical lie, hands soaring over skin.

She replies, "It was nothing like this, you surely remember."

He shrugs. _Don't bring up the sister, it's a sore spot;_ easy enough to remember and become a mantra. Easy enough to obey without thought when he's faced with the sister who's so much more. "We can reinvent that night."

She hums. He eases her flush against him, her skirt billowing through his legs when they twirl - typical Elsa, hadn't changed into her bedclothes even as the night wore on alone. He imagines her handmaidens would have asked her to disrobe. Get ready to sleep. Long day tomorrow, like always. Queens with dead parents still have a bedtime. But in no way would she let him see her in anything but her typical clothes (he's no one special), so she undoubtedly refused; he acclimated, and did the same.

"You seem to have reinvention permanently on your mind," she says.

He smiles, rests his forehead against hers; slows them. Her fingers curl into his shoulder when their breathing mingles. A hand casts up her curved spine idly - _You hope I do, don't you, Elsa?_ - and he pretends the way he presses his smile into hers is tentative.

Brief. She tilts her head away, not blushing, like how he often hopes (how easy it could be if she was a little more like her sister), but reticent and regal as always (how much more tantalizing it is because she _isn't_), in a retreat that almost seems condescending.

She corrects him with a smirk, "Not familiar at all."


	3. Blood

**16: Blood**

The staff say the Isles are courteous to not force the queen to sacrifice her time and effort into organising a trip home for Hans, and instead coming themselves. She doesn't want to cast Hans's reputation upon the rest of the bloodline (how she would be afraid if the same assumption was done to her and Anna), but it's hard, especially when the influence itself is so toxic, and when they all look so much like him.

From the way he'd spoken of them, she'd assumed Hans would be the black sheep, in manner and appearance, but at the docks there are twelve ginger-to-russet-haired individuals, in varying shades and slight fades in silhouette, but she can see Hans in all their stances, all their complexions, all their long pointed noses and steady eyes.

She holds back a well-deserved jab about inbreeding.

Off to her side, Hans has pulled himself straight again, while she regrets to note the way that his clothing hangs off of him suggests to a wild imagination that there is hardly enough of him to support any posture at all. While introductions filter through her ears, she glances at him in the undetectably secret way she used to, long ago, watch her little lonely sister – there is a feral glisten that has shattered across his expression, from face to face he glares, his teeth bared to the gums, and oddly, all she can see is a child, again, faced with a worst enemy, with no better weapon than the unreliability of their spirit.

Whenever she looked at Anna, it was quiet grief she saw, or else the stirring of optimism that she was planning on how to impress upon Elsa.

She wonders how the brothers see Hans.

Hans is shoved by her guards (a treatment she thinks she is causing them to glean like it's a smoke on the air; they're usually quite gentlemen) into the line of smartly dressed men, and it's only a hand of his brother clasped over his tied arm that stops him from stumbling. He's a mess. She would feel a twinge of regret about bringing him to see these people while in his worst state, demeaning him until all he has to fight them with is the fallacy of dignity designed by fury.

She _would_, if he wasn't who he was.

And with a suddenness that snaps her into perfect stillness, a brother snaps at Hans in a language that is not her own, or perhaps it is masked by so much fury that she cannot decipher it. A fist in his bindings, yanked and she knows it has to hurt, how thin and sharp the twine is, how weak he's already been whittled.

Hans makes a flicker of a gesture, his head jolting awkwardly her direction like he is going to ask her something, but stops abruptly in a change of heart. He instead hisses back, but it has no effect on the brother – the lead, the oldest, is apologizing to her now for Hans's behaviour.

And very suddenly, she's glad for the sister she has, a flood of affection and thankfulness that draws the haze of shame around the brothers into sharp relief, curdles within her chest with regret and pity and _laughter_; she has something more than him, he, who for so long said to be in control and in love with his curse while she burned. Now he crumbles. She can tell.

"Thank you," she says, only. "You will be escorted out."

She turns fast into the flank of guards. Behind her, boots scuff to the boat, but she hears clearly, like she'd been waiting, a pair that turn her way.

No one says anything.

They'll ruin him in the way she's tried for ages.


	4. Knife

**.22.: Knife**

"Queen of forgiveness," he says. "Goddess of redemption."

He is here illegally, his face drawn in the proper way of a fugitive: in the way he looked when he told her Anna was dead, his teeth bared, his posture begging for reverence, his pride lethal and drunk. Splashed across his face is the jewellery of blood, a rapier at his palm in the disturbingly dignified way crows trail rotted flesh from their maws. Between the Queen of Ice and him, are the strewn bodies of her aids.

"You, a monster," he doesn't let her look away, "you make me want to be a better man."

And he throws back his head and laughs.


End file.
